Jim Henson
Jim Henson is a director, born 1936.
Puppetry was the way in rather than the ambition. Jim Henson was still a university student when he began making a short late-night puppet programme for a Washington television station, and the technical discovery he made there shaped everything afterwards. Build for the camera frame instead of a stage, let the performer work below the shot with a monitor, and the puppet stops being a doll held up in the air and starts being an actor.
The Muppets came out of that. Henson performed Kermit the Frog himself, along with Rowlf, Dr Teeth, the Swedish Chef, Waldorf and the Newsman, which meant that on The Muppet Show he was frequently in conversation with himself. Kermit is the crucial one, and the crucial thing about Kermit is that he is not funny. He is the exhausted manager of a variety show collapsing around him, the calm surface everyone else can crash into, and the format depends on him staying reasonable a beat longer than he should.
Sesame Street carried the same craft into education. Fraggle Rock, which he created, was designed from the outset as an international co-production. The later work moved further from comedy: he directed The Dark Crystal, a fantasy with no human characters in it at all, and performed its lead, Jen; then Labyrinth, which found its audience slowly rather than at the box office. He created The Storyteller, and won an Emmy for directing a variety series. He died in 1990.
Movies (19)
- Labyrinth (1986)
- The Dark Crystal (1982)
- The Dark Crystal (1982)
- The Muppet Movie (1979)
- Into the Night (1985)
- The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984)
- Jim Henson Idea Man (2024)
- Follow That Bird (1985)
- The Great Muppet Caper (1981)
- The Great Muppet Caper (1981)
- Sesame Street Jam: A Musical Celebration (1993)
- Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street (2021)
- The Earth Day Special (1990)
- A Muppet Family Christmas (1987)
- The Muppets Celebrate Jim Henson (1990)
- The Muppets Go Hollywood (1979)
- The World of Jim Henson (1994)
- John Denver and the Muppets: A Christmas Together (1979)
- Mickey's 50 (1978)
TV (14)
- Sesame Street (1969)
- Sesame Street (1969)
- The Muppet Show (1976)
- The Muppet Show (1976)
- Muppet Babies (1984)
- Fraggle Rock (1983)
- Fraggle Rock (1983)
- The Storyteller (1988)
- Dog City (1992)
- The Jim Henson Hour (1989)
- The Jim Henson Hour (1989)
- Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (1948)
- Fraggle Rock: The Animated Series (1987)
- Dolly (1987)
Where to start with Jim Henson
The Muppet Show is the foundation and still the best introduction. Pick any episode with a guest you recognise and watch how the show uses that guest as either the only sane element in the room or the least sane one.
Then The Muppet Movie, the entry that works as a film rather than as a compilation, and which opens with Kermit alone on a log singing a song that has no business being as good as it is. The Great Muppet Caper and The Muppets Take Manhattan follow in descending order of how much you like the Muppets.
The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth are the other Henson, darker and stranger, and both reward being watched as design objects as much as stories. Fraggle Rock is the underrated one, genuinely thoughtful children's television, The Storyteller is short and beautiful, and Sesame Street needs no introduction from me.